The Greene County Relay for Life will kick off April with geneticist Anne Heun as the “Fight Back” speaker Friday, April 4, at 7:30 pm at Greene Bean Coffee in Jefferson.
She will speak for about 30 minutes and then be available for general questions following.
Heun is a 2005 graduate of Jefferson-Scranton High School and is the daughter of Tom and Jane Heun of rural Jefferson.
She graduated from Iowa State University in 2009 with a bachelor of science degree in genetics. After working for a year at a genetics lab at the University of Minnesota, she went on to graduate in 2012 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a master of science degree in medical genetics through the UW-Madison Genetic Counseling Training Program.
Since finishing graduate school she has worked at Unity Point Health – Des Moines, providing genetic counseling services in the cancer, prenatal, and pediatric realms. Much of her time is spent at the John Stoddard Cancer Center providing genetic counseling to patients with a personal or family history of cancer, in order to determine if their cancers have a hereditary basis.
Approximately 5-10 percent of all cancers are hereditary, meaning that a person is at higher risks of developing cancer due to an inherited genetic predisposition. If identified, efforts can be made to reduce the risk of developing cancer or to catch the cancer at an early stage through more intensive screening.
